According to this version, the Iranian leaders did not want to have a second American die in their prisons, and so — just as they have been saying — the decision to release Sarah Shourd was indeed driven by serious concern about her health.

Then there is the geopolitical element: the regime leaders are very happy with President Obama and they do not wish to see him hamstrung. Ahmadinejad’s original idea was to try to help Obama (and help himself as well) by freeing the American woman, just as the leaders of the Islamic Republic did a favor for President Carter when they freed women and blacks in 1979, long before any white male was released from captivity.

In short, as an Iranian friend of mine put it, what we are witnessing is less a power struggle than a survival struggle. One other good way to see this at work is to look around the neighborhood. As Green leader Mehdi Karroubi said the other day in an interview with Al Arabiya TV, “the regime in Tehran depends on creating international and domestic crises to safeguard its existence and continuation.” And so we see explosions in Bahrain, bombs in Iraq, Kashmir and Afghanistan, and fighting in the streets of Iranian cities. Indeed, the internal conflict has reached such a point that one of Ahmadinejad’s top assistants finally came out and told the clergy to go back into their mosques. Banafsheh’s invaluable Planet-Iran was the only one to give this amazing statement the big font it deserves:

Mohammad-Ali Ramin, Deputy Minister of Islamic Guidance and Culture for Media Relations and Ahmadinejad’s adviser on the “Holocaust Commission” announced: “We call upon all clergy to abandon civic and politics issues, partisan matters, NGO’s and western-style organizations and return to the mosques where they can benefit from greater social clout, that will ultimately elevate societal and Islamic interests. We need to be able to put our clergy to proper use, as mosque attendance has thinned out.

Pay attention to that last clause. Whatever the Islamic Republic of Iran once was, it is no longer a source of enthusiasm for the Iranian people. They have had it. They know that the only thing the regime can do with any degree of efficiency is kill their own people. The latest stories revolve around the dreadful present in Mashhad, where hundreds of prisoners have been slaughtered in recent weeks. One of the sources for the story, Ahmad Ghabel, was thrown back into prison after he told the Green Movement what was going on.

The regime continues its efforts to intimidate the Greens, to no effect. Thugs attacked Karroubi’s home, shooting 30 or 40 times into the house and setting it on fire. Karroubi told them that death did not frighten him, and the outcry was so great that within two days the government announced the arrest of the guilty parties. Mousavi’s house is under siege, every visitor is interrogated by regime thugs, and yet Mrs. Mousavi comes and goes, issuing clarion calls on behalf of Iranian women, and Mousavi himself remains an outspoken opponent of the regime.

And then, in yet another surprising retreat from the policy of all out repression, the former Justice Minister has been called to stand trial for the mass murders that followed the demonstrations of last June.

How will this play out? I think there are two basic scenarios. The first is that the Revolutionary Guards somehow get a grip on the country. It’s hard to imagine, but they do have lots of guns, and if they can kill hundreds of their own, they may well be willing to kill thousands of political opponents and normal citizens. I think the country has gone beyond the point where the tens of millions of suffering Iranians will put up with that again. But you never know.

The second scenario is that the regime implodes, unable to make decisions, unable to act decisively, and, as one key leader after the next goes over to the other side, the whole ugly thing collapses into the muck. Unlikely? Perhaps, but then it seemed even more unlikely back in the days of the Soviet Empire before it sank.

63 Comments, 37 Threads

I do hope you are correct in your assessment. Democracies, by definition, are evolutionary and do not appear overnight. France had to tolerate Robespierre’s “Le Terreur” before eventually taking its first unsure steps towards democracy. It took the arrival of the 20th century before the United States became a true representative democracy. I believe the Iranian people having undergone evil dictatorships, benevolent dictatorships and a maniacal theocracy are the only ones in the middle east truly ready for the onset of democracy. I sense that this time in history they cannot be stopped, no matter how harsh the reprisals. Their palpable alienation from Islam should grease the road for that journey. Wishful thinking?, maybe. We saw the same people, my people, rise in 1979 only to be hijacked by the current ingrates. I hope lessons have been learned. Stephen Dedalus to Leopold Bloom: “But oblige me by taking away that kinfe. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history”

The convulsions of the regime produce atrocities for the people. We easily forget how tragic history is. Back in the eighties the regime sent untold numbers among the youth to the killing fields in a futile attempt to overcome Saddam Hussein and his own bloody campaign. How can we know the repercussions of these tragedies a generation later? Can the national psyche heal? Can they overcome their tormentors after having sacrificed so much already? How can we refuse to support them? We will all be darn lucky if some kind of normalcy emerges before the convulsions extend beyond the Persian territories.

In October there would be parliamentary elections in Bahrain and the government is arresting many shia activists. Some of them are pro-democracy activists. There were also demonstrations (some of them violent) and I have read that Bahraini government prohibited publication of any news connected to on-going demonstrations. So I think it is possible that these explosion(s) were connected with demonstrations and pre-election arrests and have only peripheral connection with what is going on in Iran.
As for Revolutionary guards and drug smuggling – I think you are right that it was an excuse. Many guards and basiji are active in smuggling and usually nothing happens to them.

thunderbunny, give it up already. i was wrong once. i said so. move on. if you have substantive criticism let’s hear it. otherwise, the weather is beautiful, go out and enjoy it. soon we will be complaining about the cold and slush.

Hear, hear. Went fishing on a mountain lake yesterday with a friend to celebrate his sixty-seventh birthday. Caught nothing but clean air, water, sunshine and crisp autumn breezes. An hour north of the city the colors are just beginning to turn.

I sincerely hope our intelligence services have overcome their allergies to skullduggery and violence and meddling in the internal affairs of other nations and are doing everything they can to keep domestic affairs sizzling in Iran.

Though he wrongly predicted Khamenie’s death I think Dr. Ledeen corrected himself when he said that the “supreme one” was a “dead man walking.” Like Hitler let Khamenie (and Ahmad) live long enough to see and suffer the downfall of his terror state.

I do not think Mr. Ledeen was wrong. Fact was that during June 12th period of uprising…Khamenei had a minor stroke… I had first hand info about this and was confirmed by many inside the regime. Fact of the matter is that Iran is a dictatorship and information is tightly controlled. Case in point…I had very convincing evidence that Yahoo gave IRI a listing more than 120,000 Iranian email accounts…yahoo denied it of course and we could not dig deeper in Iran…it does not mean that it did not happen.

Have you ever been wrong or made a mistake? Have you admitted it? Does it mean that we should throw the baby with bath water and dismiss you entirely?

I wonder how much of this political and civil unrest is due to covert operations, either because of the CIA or because of the Mossad, Israel’s version of the CIA? I’ve said for many months now that the quickest way to solve the Iranian problem is through covert operations designed to destabilize the government so that regime change becomes possible. Problem is, if the Revolutionary Guards think they are going to lose power, they may end up killing thousands of Iranians in order to keep it. They may still be defeated by the people in the end, but a lot of Iranians will die in the process, just like they did when the Shah was falling. But if the CIA and Mossad are responsible for these acts of sabotage, then they should keep it up and increase the volume. It’s working and one major push may mean the difference between keeping the mullahs in power or pushing them out forever.

Also, what is happening with the Kurds? Is there a lot of social and political unrest along their border as well? The Kurds actually LIKE Americans and it could be an excellent base of operations against the Iranian regime. I hope we’re not only protecting these good allies, but I also hope that we’re using this territory to the best of our advantage.

This American can’t resist chiming in here and putting in a plug for neo-isolationism on the part of my America.

Don’t get me wrong, or, “make no mistake”, in the oft used phrase of our current president: I’m all in favor of applying our drones/covert action wherever it may prove effective in Central and West Asia. My brand of neo-isolationism means the avoidance of using our ground-fighting forces in any part of Asia. Let’s remain off-shore.

I’ve posted elsewhere that Asia is one vast sponge. So, let’s blow up energy pipelines, cut off all the cash pipelines we can, let the indigenous factions have at it without American blood being part of any equation.

We’ve shed enough blood inside Asia.

Soon enough, too soon, we Americans will face the accustomed and inevitable anti-American feelings from the very ones we’ve previously aided, prompted by some perceived slight du jour. It’s only a matter of time.

Avoiding this latent, closeted hypocrisy is my brand of neo-isolationism.

Thanks for allowing all Iranians who are fighting this regime to post here. There are more Iranian bloggers than most other countries just because of the bad media coverages. But no one in the western press reports them. Ironically when the Ayatollahs locked up the media did Twitter come as a surprise outlet. CNN had to open a section just to monitor it. So the world media is dancing to the tune of the regime. It doesn’t even respect Iranians enough to distinguish this regime from Iran. So they help this regime by refering to it as Iranian. We know they have nothing to do with Iran. Look at how they hate pre-Islamic Iran and even recently misinterpret the meanings in the Cyrus Cylinder.

Hi Mr. Ledden. I just got an email in Farsi that is comparing our ancient system of government in Iran to todays government. while this is not exactly on topic, but I think it is really cool. may I post it here?
m

This Old Civilian ex-Civil Air Transport/Air America ground-support employee recalls that when the “kickers” pushed ammunition from the side doors of those Curtis C46′s and out the back doors of our C123′s and Caribou’s (Canadair?) they/we called it “hard rice”. This was in South Viet Nam and Laos.

We also dropped cooking rice (double-bagged) and on occasion some interested personnel, and also later scooped them up and out like mailbags with a hook at a nineteenth century railroad station. It took until just a very few short years ago for the French Ambassador in Washington to say a public “..thank you..” by inducting these surviving men into their Legion of Honor. This was for our 1954 airdrops into Dien Bien Phu for the surrounded French.

Once during the 1960′s if I recall correctly, during a NATO controversy, Charles deGaulle wanted all Americans out of France. This, of course, prompted Sec’y of State Dean Rusk to ask …”Does he mean also those from the cemeteries as well?”

These and other dramatic instances of dangerous un-sung flying and American involvement in shifting geo-politics can be found at air-americadotorg. Check
it out…it’s an eye opener.

I mention all this in conjunction with my earlier post mentioning my suggested “neo-isolationism”. Gratitude is short lived; sometimes ephemeral.

Witness the current bubbling unrest in Afghanistan and Iraq. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Let’s be very, very careful about events in Iran.

As to frightening news from Iran, Peyke Iran offers another: http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=21794 Meanwhile the Intelligence Service sends plainclothes thugs with machetes to raid the homes of political prisoners families as in the case of Mohammad Salam Joushan. Even after several phone calls police officers did not react to this brutal assault, during which the entrance door, windows and furnishings were broken and looted.
Mr Farhangian’s recent statements on discontended high-ranking IRGC commanders rather point to an implosion of the regime.

From reading your essay I gather that the current regime is learning to stop at nothing to retain power, including establishing an army of hit-men to enforce its will. Unless the opposition can find an army of highly disciplined, armed, and organized soldiers, competently led, the regime is here to stay. And once Obdumbo allows them nukes, my guess their chances of long term survival are somewhat better than NYC’s.

I really like your updates. Iran is a very destabilizing force in the world. The chance of it imploding will have major repercussions around the world and be huge opportunity. An opportunity Obama will ignore but Israel will not.

My guess is if the end comes it will be like Romania. But who is going to do it? The Army, police or the people? The revolutionary guard have it good the way things are and are purging descent. I am no expert but i have fallowed the news for years. For the government to fall the security forces have got to lose the will to keep butchering descent. It seams the government still has plenty of motivated killers.

We are watching a slow Tienanmen square. The engine of repression is stressed but functioning.

In the meanwhile Ayatoolehas are continuing to commit their daily crimes. One thing that I am confused about is how serious is western and free world in dealing with Islamic murderers in Iran. For example for many years now, IRI send their athletics to the world sport events. However, if the next team is an Israeli team or if the next athletic is Israeli, then IRI athletic or team are prevented to participate in the competition. At the start of this practice by IRI, they said we don’t want to face Israelis because we don’t recognize state of Israel. Nothing was done to them by sport authorities. After some objections they now claim medical reason. Like diarrhea and in a way they use the famous Ayatoole trick (Tagheeye) which means lying for IRI principles. Still, sport authorities as is the case now in wrestling matches in Russia do nothing. Why not OCC, FIFA, FILA,….are not issuing a directives before start of the games, indicating since the sport is free of politics, all countries must sign the document indicating they will not inject political view in the competition before traveling to the event. In this case, IRI murderers are denied of using world stages for propaganda and to air their dirty laundries of their backward political views. I guess as we have seen in the last 30 years, where European enjoyed very close economic relationship with Islamic murderers and Germany and particularly MB and Siemens still are, the fight against radical Islamists and Khomeinist is conditional at best. Otherwise, if it wasn’t for the support from the West, these Khomeinist animals couldn’t survive even one year.

While the change in borders would certainly be interesting, I’d be more concerned about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Whe would get them if Pakistan split apart into smaller states, especially if some of those smaller states merged with neighbours like Afghanistan or Iran? Obviously, this would be less of an issue if Pakistan would be re-absorbed into India given that it is already a nuclear power.

Thanks for the update, Michael. The sentence that stood out was about the IRG being very happy with Obama. Sounds right, and should tell Americans everything they need to know about Obama. Is it really possible that this guy is President of the United States? Did that really happen?

Sounds like they are caught between the rock and the hard place. Yes, they can increase the violence and start massacring the average citizen (are there ‘citizens’ in Iran – have there ever been?), but at a certain point the people will take to the streets.

As for outside forces being involved in pipeline accidents and so on, how would we really know one way or the other?

I read you carefully, but I think the real problem is that the regime will not fall before Israel strikes. That will give the Islamonazis in Tehran the excuse to crack down even more, with the crackdown even degenerating into mass slaughter of opponents (and of the remaning Jews).

I’m sure Israel would like regime change, too, but she cannot risk a second Shoah waiting for it to happen.

Michael:
1. How do you know or what makes you think that Ahmadinejad likely wanted to meet with Obama?
2(a). How do you know (rather than assume) that the Iranians are happy with Obama?
(b) Also which elements are the regime are happy with him? IRGC? the Mullahs? the Opposition?

Also as an aside,your article brings to mind the title to Elaine Sciolino’s book about Iran “Persian Mirrors”

Is I said some time ago: when the refineries go, so will go the regime. This is not the first time that Iran has seen natural gas problems and someone in the region, quite possibly in Ukraine via Turkmenistan, has a good handle on just how near the Iranian natural gas system is to collapse.

Strange that there is no call by A-jad that it is ‘foreign elements’ causing these things to happen. How interesting that foreign elements control a vital input into Iran, which are out of the control of the West.

This regime is one-deep. That single layer is about to get itself scrubbed by internecine conflicts and without money from oil and natural gas not available for bakeries, things will happen there… and quickly. The inflection point was reached months ago, now the trendlines push in one direction only. The regime will not last much longer, save through blood. And that will only make things worse, the regime thinner and its day of reckoning merely delayed.

Hi Mr. ledden. sorry I should have siad I am going to traslate it. so here is the traslation. it is a little rough but I think everone will get the gist of it. this is a comparison between Kourosh the persian king who started the persian dynasty 2600 years ago and todays rulers.

Kourosh:
do not inflict damages to Sumerian people.
everyone should be permitted to pray to thier own god and do not harm them because of their religion.
do not destry anyone’s houses and do not bother anyone else.
rebuild all destroyed homes.

today:
the Allah siad through Mohamad:
hey profit: we give all the momen so that you are not bothered. choose whom ever you want.
whem you counter a non muslim behead him, tie up theire people and get money from them.
your women are a like farm. farm them any which way you want.
get the non belivers and stone them.
kill all the infidels, young and old.

I’d like to know who’s got the guts to blow up stuff belonging to the revolutionalry government and if we can find these guys, pay them lots of money and give them good support and they go make even more trouble for the regime.

Mr Ledeen,
First, one question. Would you please refer us to any press reports about the events in Mashhad that you described or the fact that there have been about 100 executions of IRCG members for their dissent. Not that this regime is not capable of such crimes, but wanted to know if you are willing to share sources, or do we have to accept it as your claim.
Second and more seriously, do you think the end of this regime will come about by wishful thinking or concrete actions? I hope you agree that we have to examine Iranian history for downfall of such magnitude. One possible comparison is to the downfall of the Shah, which better serves than the example that you mentioned, that of Soviet Union. I hope that you accept if it was not for the heroic strikes of the oil workers in southern Iran, the rug might not have been pulled from under the Shah that quickly.
I think if opposition was more organized and united, we would have a better chance of a meaningful change in Iran. The Green opposition does not amount to only Mousavi or Karroubi, although they certainly deserve a place there, but unfortunately, the secular opposition does not have a leadership. I would like to see a council leading the secular voices and there are plenty of good choices in Iran and abroad to coordinate.
Hoping for a free Iran!

It’s interesting to try to identify something to compare this with. The dynamics seem to be more like the period surrounding the Kerensky government succumbing to the Bolsheviks than anything else. But that’s not a comment on the political direction of any potential new beginnings, it’s just an observation about the quality of the internal turmoil.

Reports of dissidence in the RG are spotty, but it’s good to see them from different sources. I do think that will be the key. Iran has her internal problems, but she’s not Iraq. I do think a relatively orderly transition is possible, without outside help, as long as the RG swings early on.

Something about all this sounds like evil fighting with its back to the wall. If the right ayatollahs and political leaders can get a coalition going with key RG figures, this could all come to a head and produce change very quickly. I’m actually thankful Obama isn’t trying to do a “Reagan in Poland,” as he’d only make things worse.

As much as I’d love to see Khomeini and Imadinnerjacket go the way of the dodo, How “moderate” is the Green Movement, really? Aren’t we seeing one group of Islamists trying to upend another? Would this change make the Middle East more stable, or maintain the status quo? I’m not very well-informed on these matters, so I’d like to know your opinions.

thank you for the article. the reports of killing of basiji/IRGC by the regime doesn’t surprise me at all. i have heard of dissident basiji being murdered (i remember hearing of one who was murdered and his body chopped up because he refused orders)

i hear such things (which i believe), yet

for example u state….”in the past few days about 30 dissident RGs in the Mashhad prison were told they had been forgiven, and would be reintegrated into the ranks. They were put on a bus and fed food and (poisoned) drinks. When they passed out they were dumped into a mass grave and buried, more or less alive. Astonishingly someone saw it, and reported it, and some fifty security officials are now being interrogated.”

Amazing stuff and I hope every word of it is true. Iran is the key to the whole neighborhood. If that regimes falls Iraq and Afghanistan might have a chance; the latter needs regime change next door even more than the former. But both countries would benefit immensely if that atrocious regime comes to a well-deserved demise and very soon.

After years of studying the characteristic idiosyncracies of the Iranians and the Arabs the intelligence services of the Perfidious Albion reached a simple conclusion. To keep the Arabs quiet be sure that their bellies are full. To keep the Iranians quiet, keep them hungry. And, oh boy, were their bellies ever full in 1979. The demographics of the “revolutionaries” included young idealistic college students, religious zealots of all ages who had been marginalized by the Shah and “intellectuals” who had claimed that mantle by reading all of maybe two books, possibly three. Now the revolutionaries of yesteryears are in the fourth quartile of their lives answerable to their progenies who incessantly ask them why they created a system that has left them in deep doodoo. Ruining your own life is one thing, but screwing your children’s lives is inexcusable. And that is a guilt they will take to their graves.

Michael, I know you prefer to stay on topic, but I am curious about one thing: those in US government, who disagree with you, regardless if their habitat is Langley, Foggy Bottom, or the NSC, does their competiting “vision” go beyond the Muslim world?

For, there are Brits who are none too pleased with the US regarding its support for Brussels.

I spoke with an international lawyer who travels and takes on terror cases. His take is that western agencies and putting “grit in the gears” to slow down the nuke program while waiting for the demographics to catch up and the government to change. He does not think Israel or the US will attack Iran. A hopeful outlook or informed judgment?

Nothing to do with the subject. Dr. Ledeen, I am not sure how much operational “pull” you have at AEI, but it would be nice if they were to offer an IPhone app for their research as does CFR. Sorry to be off topic.